


Sunspot

by Goldmonger



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Brotherly Love, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Family Feels, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Platonic Cuddling, Post-Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Soulmates, dean is the best uncle, everything is actually good and nothing really hurts, sam is a proud dad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-25
Updated: 2020-11-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 02:14:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27706102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goldmonger/pseuds/Goldmonger
Summary: Sam, Dean, and the Grand Canyon. Who knew heaven was a place on Earth?
Relationships: Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Comments: 16
Kudos: 85





	Sunspot

**Author's Note:**

> A Grand Canyon curtain fic in my 2020? It's more likely that you think

He breathes slowly, pulling air that isn’t truly air deep into his divinely manifested lungs. He smells heated sandstone, beer, the tang of his brother’s sweat, and it drives at something buried, dislodges something stuck. He exhales, and breathes it all in again, through both his mouth and nose. The air that isn’t air tastes mostly like oxygen and a little like candy. Jack screwing around with the molecules of the place, he figures.

“You’re smiling in your sleep.”

Dean cracks open an eye. He finds Sam standing by the edge of the escarpment, shirtless, his fingers interlocked behind his head, chin tilted up in bliss. He can only see his glistening back, darkened by a holy sun, and hair that sticks to his neck in tendrils.

“I’m awake,” Dean challenges, still perfectly capable of being a grump. There’s no exhaustion up here, no passing out, but he still revels in dozing. It’s nice, knowing he could drift forever if he wanted. Dreamlessness had always seemed to be an inconceivable luxury to him, until recently.

He eases himself up to his elbows, the argyle picnic blanket cushioning him from the gritty plateau. The cooler is bristling with fresh brews, the ice dribbling meltwater tantalisingly down its sides. Dean reaches over and plucks one, and then Sam is there, manhandling him out of the way and grabbing a bottle of his own.

“Busybody,” says Dean. He tugs at the hem of Sam’s gym shorts as he folds down to the blanket beside him. “You look like an LA douchebag in these, by the way.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Sam replies, browned and grinning, his eyes jewel-bright under the relentless blaze. He looks twenty-four, some days, shaggy and loping and liberal with his squeezing hugs, his arms taut with muscle; other days (moments, really – time doesn’t obey the rules it used to) Sam is thirty-seven, yet overlaid with snow, wrinkles on his knuckles beside Dean’s unblemished own. Dean usually chalks it up to metaphysical fuckery, and his own perception, because whenever he consciously notices Sam’s broad shoulders hunch or his mane of hair grow brittle, that impression of advanced age diminishes. He wonders if it’s because he corrects his brother to what he wants to see, or if it’s the effect of his hand jumping instantly to Sam’s wrist, or around the back of his neck. Sam turns to him every time, shedding years like unwanted layers, and it makes Dean feel like – well, he doesn’t know. Hopeful that he’s helping. Certain that he needs to. He tends to his brother’s elderly soul with the care of a gardener, and it feels natural. Reciprocated, even. It’s as though he’s been doing this his entire life: protecting Sam, mind, body, and everything in between.

A finger prods him in his cheek.

“Daydreaming?” asks Sam, amused. “Don’t you go away on me.”

The reprimand is breezy, but they’re in a place now where the few remaining barriers that once separated them have dissolved, the last pretences expunged. Dean experiences his brother’s anxiety like a jolt of electricity, and he shudders. Scoots closer automatically.

“I’m not going anywhere, you dipstick,” he tells him, and Sam huffs – maybe in exasperation, maybe in relief – and they lean against one another, still for a moment (many moments). The wind howls through the canyon, the dust spiralling around them in Fibonacci whorls. The horizon is being set alight, the sheer rock faces miles across from their campsite steeped in shadow while they squint into glaring rays that expand, and ignite their skin to the same bioluminescent hue of fireflies. Dean keeps expecting the chill of an Arizona desert night to wash up at any second, but it never happens. The evening stretches, an impossibly long sunset that allows him to lounge, stupid with joy and warmed to his bones by Sam’s body.

“Tell me again,” Dean says, when the first stars wink from the far ridges of the canyon. The sky is still periwinkle blue overhead, a serenity untouched by the smearing pinks and bloody reds pouring from the sun, burst like an overripe peach. Sam shifts, and bumps his fist against Dean’s middle, pressing, insisting, until he’s got them both lying flat on their backs. It reminds Dean vaguely of ancient history, evenings where nightmares crippled one or both of them, and they’d resort to huddling like penguins in a blizzard. He remembers feeling better, safer, knowing Sam was within reach, knowing that the horror was temporary. The horror in question had been hell, he’s sure of that much, but it was such a long time ago. The urgency is gone. It’s strange, how he’s able to recall with eerie clarity the brand of Sam’s baby formula, or the first time he drove his brother to school in the Impala, but demons’ names are smoke. It’s just easier to dwell on the good stuff – tiny but thrillingly pleasant things like old dates, or favourite movies, or his brother silently laughing at him.

“I’m listening,” Dean reassures him, shaking himself. “Sorry, it’s just –,”

“I know,” Sam says, head lolling towards him. His eyes are crinkling, still sparkling, the absolute sap. “You’re comfortable.”

“Will marvels never cease,” Dean says archly, and Sam smiles, lines smoothing over the angles of his face, youth dappling him like light.

“So do you actually want to hear?” Sam asks, a tinge of sarcasm in his tone. “Or are you are you going to fall asleep on me again, singing REO Speedwagon’s entire catalogue?”

“I’m here, I’m here,” Dean drones theatrically, as though he wasn’t the one who wanted a replay of the stories in the first place. He’s gotten used to just requesting them outright, a considerable step up from his nerves on that bridge, way back when Sam had first arrived. It had taken him a while to gather the courage to just ask Sam what he’d missed, let alone whether he’d repeat the finer details of events. He hadn’t wanted to seem like he was prying. It was Sam, of course, who called him an idiot and said terrible truths that split him in two, like _I did it so I could tell you about it. Forty years for you to study._ He’d chuckled, thought it a joke, but Dean had agreed. He would learn about every single minute of Sam’s life after him, would spend eternity becoming acquainted with any part of Sam he didn’t already know backwards and forwards. Any tedium was glorious to him now.

“Day one,” Sam starts, and Dean tips his cold beer over Sam’s bare stomach, gratified when his brother squawks like a prey animal.

“Not that,” Dean says, sharply enough that Sam stops flailing and waits, watching Dean’s profile. “Not that day.”

“’Cause I drove your car?”

Dean lets him tease and make fun, only slightly guilty when that transitions into Sam sighing and inching closer.

Dean’s studying, all right, but he doesn’t want to think about Sam alone, today. He will observe it, remember it, because it’s crucial to understanding Sam’s past – but not here, he thinks, loose-limbed in a haze of heat and fading gold. Those tales are for frosted midnights in cabins, or when there’s something nearby to break. All that’s here right now is Sam, and he’s twenty-two, hair downy-soft against Dean’s neck.

“Okay, okay,” Sam relents. “So. Dean.”

Dean’s apprehension drains abruptly, and he waits, practically vibrating. These bits – well. They strike a chord of such delirious happiness within him that it’s nearly embarrassing. Sam has gleefully pointed out many times already that this train of thought makes Dean cry, but the pair of them end up sniffling periodically anyway, so who’s really keeping track?

Besides, _some_ wuss behaviour is permissible in _some_ situations. Like Sam near and wholly content, glowing from a memory.

“I mean, this kid,” says Sam beatifically. “This unbelievably kind, amazing kid.”

Dean grins, at the familiarity more than anything.

“So it’s a Friday,” Sam says, “right, and Jen’s away at her practice, working late because the youngest kids’ appointments always used to run over their scheduled hour. It’s just the two of us in the house, which was fairly normal for a weekday, so no problem there, you’d think. We have a routine in place, schoolwork for both of us, then we eat, then we play chess or whatever he wants – stream something, generally, it being Friday night and all. So yeah – I’m in the kitchen grading assignments and making dinner at the same time, all distracted by potatoes and grammar, and I don’t even consider where Dean is because he’s so good about doing his homework, whether it’s at the kitchen table or in his room. His teachers – man, they raved. He tried, too, you know? He had smarts, but it was more than that. He wanted to do the work.”

Sam is flushed with pride and longing, and Dean’s so engrossed he’s nearly rolled on his side, all attention zeroed in on his brother.

“But – yeah, anyway, he’s clever as they come, and cool about it too, so I know I can trust him alone while I work. But I’m standing there peeling, and I think I hear like – screaming from outside, on the street. And the place is overrun with families, so I just presume it’s some preteens messing around, and I pay it no mind. Well, _then_ I hear this chanting, and – all right, so I’m maybe not the most easy-going parent in the neighbourhood –,”

Dean smirks.

“– so I look outside and I see this crowd of kids gathered on the sidewalk. And yeah, I’m a worrier, so I call up to Dean, and I hear nothing, which is when I yell for him, _Dean Robert_ – and he knows that’s serious – but still nothing. I run outside, itching for my gun though I’d gotten out of the habit of actually grabbing for the safe-box, and I head for this cluster of children, and right there, I see –,”

Dean whoops, a little prematurely, but he can’t resist. “Little legend,” he says fondly, as Sam drags a hand down his face.

“No – I mean, I was panicking, dude. Thought I was witnessing some changelings gone rabid or something. Shaking like a leaf. Instead I break up this party to find my kid, on top of another kid, beating the tar out of him.”

Dean gasps, like this is the first he’s hearing of it, and Sam has to chew his lip to prevent himself from laughing.

“At first, I didn’t know,” he says. “I mean, I’d just come upon two eight-year olds fighting like feral cats, both bleeding. It was all I could do to tear them apart. The rest of their audience scattered fairly quick after I showed up, and the other kid took off like a bat out of – well, you know.”

Dean shrugs, smug about it.

“Right. So I yank Dean into the house, already planning to call the parents of the kids I knew out there, going all Lord of the Flies _on the street_ – and the entire time Dean’s been quiet as a mouse. Not that he was ever an open book, but it was still frightening. So I sit him at the kitchen table, I check him over, clean up the few little scratches he had, and I ask him directly what happened. And he says ‘nothing, Dad’, like it was all a misunderstanding –,”

The title, Sam’s new title, makes Dean almost buoyant. Regardless of how often he’s heard it. He treasures the concept, despite it being so far removed from him: Sam the dad.

“– but I’m wise to him,” Sam is saying, lost in the story, “and he knows it. So I give him some ice for a bruise, and I sit down with him, and I start describing the numerous fights of a certain somebody –,”

“Only the ones I won,” Dean demands. “Wait – did you tell him I killed Hitler?”

Sam snorts. “No, I saved that for when his prefrontal cortex was a bit more developed. On that day I told him about his uncle starting fights _with humans_ over what he thought was a good reason, like looking out for his brother.”

“I really am a hero,” Dean declares, nudging Sam obnoxiously until he gets thumped for his trouble.

“Jeez. Listen!”

“I am! You’re leaving out the good parts. What about when he told you he ‘almost had him’?”

“Oh, yeah. He was being really stoic, acting as though this fight was a secret he’d been prepared to take to his grave, telling me he would’ve been fine, et cetera. But he sort of looked down when I reminded him about the stories of you beating up my bullies – as if football players intimidated me in high school, but anyway –,”

“Hey. They said your girly hair was girly. Only I get to do that.”

Sam groans dramatically, but the fondness is unmistakeably evident. Dean tousles the offending mop, to reinforce his argument.

“Gah, knock it off. Anyway. He looked all broken up all of a sudden, so I told him he could tell me anything that was bothering him, if he was being annoyed at school or was hurt by something someone said. Anything. And he mumbled that he wasn’t sorry about the fight because he had to make the kid stop.”

“Damn right,” Dean says, and he can picture it: the floppy hair in his eyes, the defiant expression, the bloody scrapes on miniature, tightly clenched fists. The surge of adoration is startlingly similar to when he was twelve, and trying not to congratulate his brother on kicking the ass of someone twice his size. Trying not to in front of their dad, at least.

“It shocked me, a bit,” Sam admits. “So I questioned him, and I found out about this rampant bullying of the kids in his school’s community outreach programme. Calling them trailer trash and destroying their belongings, all this crap. Well, that day Dean saw one of the little shits pulling some girl’s hair, making her cry, and he took matters into his own hands.”

Dean heaves himself up to sit cross-legged, watching Sam watch him. The wind is calm, mild and aromatic, curving around rather than through them, like it knows better.

“He said all he wanted was to be like Uncle Dean,” Sam says, his grin wry, like he can tell Dean’s heart is growing three sizes. Dean glances up, to their canvas tent and the dregs of their campfire and the sleek eternal beast that is their car, and he breathes. The movement of the air is slow, by his design. He tastes oxygen and a cloying sweetness that might be nougat.

“He’ll be here soon,” Sam murmurs, bumping his drawn-up knee against Dean’s shoulder. “I don’t know how things work up here, exactly, but I wanted – time, I suppose. Our version of it. I wanted to wait out his age, so that when I see him again, it won’t make me sad that he’s not a boy anymore.”

“You might not see him as an old guy. He might be young, for you.”

“I don’t know.”

Dean pats Sam’s flat belly. “You look pretty spry right now, sparky. It could be the same for him.”

Sam sits up, propped on his hands, his long legs sprawled in front of him. He’s lit by the conflagration pouring over the canyon, basking in liquid fire that for once, doesn’t summon old agonies for either of them. His jaw is furred with stubble, though, his chest deflating – going from sculpted to virtually concave.

“Well, it’s easy to be happy when I’m with you,” Sam says, and Dean’s gut is wrenched when he thinks about how they are now – how different it is to the front they put up, back when they were alive and terrified all the time. He doesn’t remember everything about Earth, but he remembers needless yelling matches and withheld trust. What a waste, he thinks, that he didn’t figure out how idiotic that was until he had a hole ripped through him.

“Meaning I look like I did when we hunted,” Sam clarifies, slightly pink. “Don’t let your head get filled with more hot air.”

“Too late,” Dean says, smiling. He beckons, and has only a split-second to regret it when Sam leaps on him, turning Dean’s embrace into a wrestling match that nearly travels to edge of the canyon.

“You jackass,” Dean wheezes after way too long, sick of Sam pinning him with little to no effort. He taps out, plotting to rectify such a humiliation before he loses all his older brother credibility.

Sam rolls off him obligingly, arms held aloft in triumph. “Always winning,” he shouts, his voice echoing through the ravine that drops off mere feet from their scuffle. He jogs to the precipice and roars it again, a hundred Sams in agreement: _winning, winning, winning._

“Bet I could fly,” Sam jokes, tipping sideways. “I’m literally in heaven already, so –,”

He blinks when Dean’s suddenly before him, fingers wrapped around his upper arms, hauling him away from the gaping pit with a vehemence that stuns both of them. They crumple back onto the picnic blanket and Dean’s apologising – the words spill out, tangled up and feeble, but he doesn’t know how to stop, how to arrange them into an acceptable explanation. He’s not out of that purified breath, he knows he can’t be, but he also can’t elude the phantom ache of an old, old fear.

“Damn it, Dean,” Sam says soberly, winding an arm around his shoulders, staying solid and safe and present for him. “You know that I can’t –,”

“Shut up,” Dean mutters. Sam’s laughter is sandpaper rough but warm, and he keeps holding him up without complaint. Dean wants to nag him for taking over his job, but he feels like his body is made of jelly. He never wants to move again.

“Dean, look.”

“Hnngh.”

“ _Dean._ The sun. It’s really setting.”

He emerges from a Sam-cocoon blearily, but finds that he doesn’t need to shade his eyes to see the iridescent horizon melt into a silken navy-black, the canyon no longer gilded.

“Wait for it,” Sam says in his ear, and Dean wants to pinch him and claim that he’s seen this before, he won’t be floored by it again –

“Wow,” Sam whispers, and the sound is irresistible to him; he follows his brother’s awe directly upwards, where billions upon billions of stars emerge. They float and swim, stir and jump, infinite soul-bright points of brilliance swarming like fish in an inky ocean. Nebulae undulate behind the constellations in mists of pinks, and greens, and purples, and a moon rapidly blooms silver from the wisps of gossamer clouds. Their plateau is bathed in a cosmically enhanced twilight. Exalted by it.

“Only at the Grand Canyon,” Sam says reverently. “Gets me every time.”

Dean clings to his brother, and rejoices at the absence of shame for this weakness, which is no longer weakness; for needing this, for always having needed it. There’s no demon here to use it against him, no angel to order them into a fight to the death, no parent to split them apart, no circumstance that compels one of them to leave the other. Ever again.

Sam can fly if he wants to, Dean figures. He’d be right there, flying with him.

“Glad to be with you, Sam,” he says. “Here at the end of all things.”

Sam looks at him incredulously. “Are you quoting ‘Return of the King’ at me? You _nerd?_ ”

Dean drags him into a headlock, all those brains and that fluffy hair in one armful. “To honour Tolkien? Yeah. Now do you want to watch the trilogy again or not?”

Sam pulls himself free and flashes his teeth, eyes incandescent as the sun. He may as well replace it, Dean thinks.

“Race you?”

“You’re on.”

They peel off towards the tent, shoving at each other, twenty-two and twenty-six, twelve and sixteen, seventy-three and forty-one, all their combined years of hell obscured by this – a single moment.

(And heaven is made of endless moments.)

**Author's Note:**

> <3


End file.
